This invention relates to poultry processing apparatus and is more particularly concerned with an oil sac removing operation, a neck breaking operation and their support frame and drive means.
The present poultry processing lines require a number of operators station adjacent the line for individually holding and manually removing the oil sac. This process is costly to the processing operation and its performance is subject to the many characteristics affecting worker habits and conditions.
A number of attempts have been made to design apparatus which could perform the oil sac removing operation. However, the prior art apparatus have been undesirable in that the apparatus was ineffective, leaving a high percentage of the oil sac, causing back-up operators to be available for finishing the job.
Also, a number of attempts have been made to provide apparatus for breaking the neck of birds moving along the processing line. The prior art neck breakers required individual equipment, are complex in construction and use and fail to do an effective job thus, they are not economically advantageous to the processing operation.
Further, most of the prior art poultry processing apparatus require complex frame structures and complex drive mechanism that require a complete shut down of the processing line for extended periods of time which adds considerably to the cost of installation, maintainence and repair of the equipment. In addition the prior art frame structure are large requiring excessive space along the processing line which would often require a complete line location or building addition in order to accomodate the apparatus.